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The Best Defense: Attack
We live in times when certain forces around us, seen and unseen, defend themselves by attacking their assailants, real or imagined, by any means possible, and often by those means which we might consider not only underhand, but illegal. Illegality is, of course, something discerned by those in power, and not necessarily by the law books, by custom or any other means, including the law courts. There are enough examples of actions taken which have not only been widely condemned in the mass media and by the public, but ruled illegal by courts at all levels, and still ignored. The interested spectator need only take a quick glance at the…
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Where Were You In The Great War?
There was a British poster, during the World War, of a young child sitting on her father’s knee and asking, in all innocence, what he did during the war. The idea, clear to all at the time, was to embarrass all those who had not taken part, not served the fatherland in some form of military role, to awaken a nationalistic feeling, awaken patriotism for the country, and avoid having to explain themselves at a later date. The same level of patriotism, of being prepared to serve the country and, if necessary, sacrifice your life, was raised again during the Second World War, and then seemed to disappear from the…
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Let The Red-Faced Blustering Begin
The question is posed every year: why do we have demonstrations for Gay Rights – in all their facets – when Gays have already been granted the vote, can marry, have equal rights, health care, job security just the same as normal people? As a subsidiary question, from certain quarters, comes the question of why there is not a White Male Day each year, and whether this lack is somehow sexist. For most thinking people, the answers to all such questions are very clear indeed, they just need to be reiterated every single year for the hard of understanding at the back. Last month I attended the Christopher Street Day…
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Recording the Dark Side of Life
Life is not just one pleasure ride, there are ups and there are downs and the description, heard many years ago, that life is a rollercoaster still fits to this day. How we weather the individual events of our lives is impossible to regulate, and also to foresee. Events happen which we have not expected, which we could never anticipate, and with which we have no connection, and our lives are often changed by the actions of others. For anyone to claim they have their life under control is the equivalent of wearing blinkers which only allow us to see one direction, a form of tunnel vision of the mind.…
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Misinformation: the Thin-Skinned and the Gullible
A close friend of mine received some unwelcome post recently: a letter from the local police force with an accusation of insulting behaviour. It referred to a comment she had posted on a certain social media web site – well-known for its own lack of legal responsibility, partisanship and the politics of its owner – where she drew, in no uncertain terms, the original poster’s attention to a piece of misinformation from a German politician, well known for a wealth of false claims over the years, and described the further distribution of such fact-free propaganda as more than just foolish. The poster felt that their honour and credibility had been…
